Combat will be what kills this game [end of days! redeem! blah blah!]

[Steeled]

This thread has little/nothing to do with red telegraphed areas and the latency issues relating

First, I love the design of the combat. Tera (a "AAA" mmo) and other AA titles did it better with free-targeting, but I like, design-wise, how this combat is done. I like the dancing and dodging.

Combat is one of the things that hooked me.

There are several problems with the combat though.

Off-GCD abilities are not instant, like they should be
The whole point of off-gcd abilities is using them precisely when you need them. The standard mmo model long ago realized that slowing your rotation is stupid. Memorizing fights is also stupid (though the gaming community hasn't caught on to this one). A paladin can solo tank and stun ifrit, if he's memorized the eruption pattern and slows himself a little when he expects an eruption coming. (That's not to imply shield bash is off the GCD, that's just about memorizing patterns).

Perhaps it's a symptom of the client-server communication but only is there a sort of mini-gcd, an Animation-Lock (because SE wants to see all our animations), but abilities also seem to be timed so that the effect is not seen until the damage connects. Warrior's stun, Brutal Swing, does not appear to stun until the axe connects. Is this deliberate or coincidental? I can't say.

We don't care about our animations

The first time I used Rage of Halone, it was neat. I liked it. It reminded me a lot of a stylish Vorpal Blade.

Now? I don't care. I don't want to be unable to use Hallowed Ground, Sentinel, Foresight, etc when I click them because you want me to see RoH for the hundred-thousandth time. If one among us loves his animations so much, he can go solo and watch them.

Combat is so vibrant and pretty in this game that we lose much of the effects in the moment. I'm watching my feet, I'm glancing at threat-list, I'm glancing at party list, party chat, sometimes watching my debuffs, or a focus target.

The inability to stack common sense macros properly
Combat-rezzing, for instance, is about finding the opportune moment to raise your comrade. This is done by trying to prop up the tank as much as possible, targeting your fallen fellow, Swiftcasting, and raising. However, while you're doing this, everyone is taking damage. The small half-second of watching your swiftcast animation before you can click again is just... infuriating. That half second can be the difference between a death that dominos into failure.

Sorry, but it's common sense that we should be able to press a single macro, execute, and move on.

Raising targets and the inability to heal them for...5 seconds afterward

If I raise you, wait til you have some health, and cast a cure on you, the cure lands on me. You get nothing. This is true for 3-5 seconds after you're alive. This leads to wasted mana, and wasted GCDs, and often, a re-death.

The funny thing is that scholar pets can heal these targets almost immediately. I don't consider this a bug, I consider the scholar pets being able to heal properly and healers are the ones that are bugged.

Consumption of abilities and having no effect: Part 1

Sorry, if the white mage uses Benediction on me, and the effect goes off, I should not die from a 200 hit immediately after. This is most evident of some serious latency problems in combat. If the game knows the target was alive when the whm hit it, the target should survive. Something needs to be looked at regarding this.

Famously, abilities don't take effect until the animation completes, which is why paladins can die after they use hallowed ground, even against the most types of damage that HG is immune to.

Consumption of abilities and having no effect: Part 2

It is an "accepted bug", that we're not hearing any feedback on, that abilities are occasionally eaten while having no effect. I stack bloodbath and foresight and Vengeance in a macro on my warrior. I have to triple-press this macro, and frequently enough, one of the effects does not happen. It goes on cooldown, but it does not happen. What the heck is this about? Other things, too, are accepted bugs, and we don't hear anything about what's happening to fix them.